[sb52191]

"I think it’s much more likely that, rather than empowering employees to live rich and fulfilling lives outside of work, a massive shift to remote will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found - so instead of living on an SF salary in Coer d’Alene you’ll be living on a Lagos or Jakarta salary"

I disagree. If companies felt they could readily get the same level of talent outside the US, why wouldn't they do that currently? Just set up their business in a foreign country and recruit internationally? And if they're still hiring domestically, why are you so sure they're going to dramatically reduce salaries? They still have to attract talent. If an employee wants to move from the bay area to Wyoming, and their employer says their pay will be cut 50%, what's to stop them from applying to Twitter or another company allowing full remote with (I'm assuming, I haven't checked) a much more competitive salary?

"while obliterating the distinction between “work life” and “home life”"

I've seen far too many emails sent by people at 11:30 PM and followed up with another email at 6 AM for me to believe this hasn't already happened. Not to mention the self imposed aspect of it (neither of those emails NEEDED to be sent at those times).

[hadlock]

Last couple of companies I worked at, they are already outsourcing "average" work. We had a QA manager in the bay area, and then he had a team of six people in SE asia doing QA/QA automation. On the engineering side we had a team of 20 engineers in eastern Europe working for less than 30k/year usd working on bug fixes and test coverage, UI fixes, modifying legacy code from the original monolith that didn't change a whole lot etc

In the bay area we only had five engineers, mostly focuses on architecture, R&D, new products etc, and even then they only came in two-three days a week mostly for face to face meetings. The VP had a lake house in tahoe and would work remote for 2 months every summer.

I can see a bunch of legacy code maintenance/qa work moving offshore further, but there will always be a core group of five to ten engineers who meet at the central office a couple times a month. Remote will increase but humans still need face to face contact periodically.

[bluekite2000]

Yeah I know a bunch of QA companies in Vietnam. How did your company find them? I am Vietnamese American myself and have spent a lot of time in the region. It is an amazing place w/ a hungry yet educated youth population, great food, beautiful beaches and quite fast internet. Surprised not many American companies heading there to recruit.

[hadlock]

We initially hired the QA manager as our first QA hire, then he built the team in his country. After a couple of years we paid for his visa and he lives in the US now and has been with the company for over five years.

We went through Vietnam including Nha-trang on a tourist trip two years ago, of which I think Nha-trang is sort of their tech capital, I was really impressed with the level of development there and how modern it was, although I didn't talk with anyone directly in the industry while I was there. It definitely had an international modern vibe compared to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

[bluekite2000]

I would replace Nhatrang with Danang. Danang is the next big coastal tech hub now.

[wobbly_bush]

How is that "outsourcing"? Everyone is still from the same company but instead of just different cities, it's different countries as well.

[hadlock]

You are correct, this is technically offshoring, not outsourcing since they are on the company payroll.

[kthxbye123]

>> If companies felt they could readily get the same level of talent outside the US, why wouldn't they do that currently?

Well, by the same logic, why didn’t FB have a remote forward strategy before now? Presumably the pandemic has changed firms assumptions about the relative value of remote and in person work.

[sb52191]

Because it's hard to drive change if there isn't a "need". Going into the office is the status quo, and there wasn't any real pressing drive to change/innovate there.

Now that companies have been forced to go remote, I think they're seeing some benefits from it, and there's a lot less inertia to fight against.

[kthxbye123]

Yes, my point is that this is the same mechanism that will reduce the inertia for "move half of our engineers to low-wage countries and squeeze the wages of the ones that are left"

[coronacrown]

Executive changes? One of the engineering leaders, Jay Parikh recently left. He was not a fan of remote workers.

[polynomial]

I think the point is not hiring in Lagos or Jarkarta, but hiring closer to that salary level. Facebook has already indicated salary cuts may be forthcoming for those who relocate out of the Bay Area, and we're still in the very early stages here.